TOPICS OF THE DAY.
WHAT WILL PARLIAMENT DO?
DARLIAMENT meets on Thursday week, and everybody is 1 asking what Parliament will do, while the answers show an unusual amount of hesitation. Here and there a Tory journal, anxious to encourage its party, asserts that the " senti- mentalists " will be crushed by a larger majority than ever, and is supported by the party-hack who asks, with cynical complacency, if a Tory majority has ever yet, under any cir- cumstances, deserted its leaders, and if it is likely to give up the first grasp of real power that it has enjoyed for a gener- ation. There are, too, we find, a few Liberals, very few, of very sanguine temperaments, who think that the Session will be a surprise ; that Members will meet full of indignation, and that the Government will be turned out by an unexpected but decisive vote. The great majority of observers on both sides are, however, either disinclined or unable to form an opinion as to the course of the Session, and it may be noted that the more experienced they are, and the nearer they stand to the centre of affairs, the more cautious and reticent they become. The truth is, the usual data for the formation of an opinion are absent. No one knows exactly the line which the Government will take in defending itself, the objects it will avow, or even the sympathies it will as a body display. That it has failed in securing its avowed objects, failed in defending Turkey, failed in protecting the Turkish Christians, failed in preventing war, is certain, but it is not certain that it has not secured other results to which it may profess to attach high value. It is this doubt which, we presume, actuated Mr. Gladstone in what seems to us the unwise course which he adopted on Monday. He apparently thought it unadvisable, with the meeting of Parliament so near, to state the policy he would recommend, yet could not refrain from touching the subject, and indicating that his sentiments on the situation were unchanged, though he would not explain the line of action to which that situation and those sentiments ought necessarily to lead. The effect of such a speech—prob- ably the unjust effect—is to produce in the public an impres- sion of half-heartedness and hesitation, not diminished by the almost entire reticence of Mr. Gladstone's friends. The leaders of Opposition have studiously refrained from giving any hint of what they think ought to be done, now that Europe has retreated discredited before Turkey. Even the Duke of Argyll, though his view can scarcely be doubted, has remained silent, and apparently, therefore, un- decided; while Sir William Harcourt, though he has been decided enough, has not been a Cabinet Minister, and never quite satisfies us whether, when apparently most determined, he is explaining a policy, or only flying a kite to discover which way the wind is blowing. Englishmen in considerable crises look in the first place to their responsible leaders, like soldiers to their officers ; and as no one knows accurately what the word of command is to be, no one forms an opinion as to the enthusiasm or disappointment which it may create, and upon the character of that emotion the Parliamentary battle -will turn.
Although far from sanguine, for we remember the de- sertion of Denmark, and the absolute refusal of everybody except the Duke of Argyll to do any justice to Crete, and are aware both of the strength of the English distrust of Russia and of the English reverence for" that blessed word Constanti- nople,'" we have not lost all hope that Parliament may prove more "sentimental" than men like Mr. Lowther or the Ma- hommedan journalists of London yet imagine. We do not• think it possible, to begin with, that Government should make out a good case for itself. The English mind is not very acute, but it appreciates broad facts very readily, and the broad fact is that the Government has failed. It has made a great effort to avert a particular danger—an attack on Turkey by Russia, with Turkey unsupported—it has sent out its best man to ward off that danger, but it has-shrunk from allowing him to use the only means by which he could impress his audience, and as a direct consequence of its policy, that danger is nearer than it has ever been. The country sees that, and the Government, even if it were not so entirely outweighted in the Commons in the way of debating capacity, is not likely therefore to obtain an intellectual victory. It can only hope for a victory in the voting-lobbies, and that victory, though probable, is still, as we believe, not certain. In the Peers, of course, Government is safe. "Society" is, on the whole and up to a point, pro-Turkish,---that is, it would not -fight for Turkey, but it thinks massacres of Eastern Christians" mani- festations of misdirected energy" with which we have no con- cern,—and the House of Lords—with a reserve on agricultural questions—is the Liebig's Extract of "Society." The Peers are always more or less Conservative ; they are pleased to see substantial power transferred, as it has been, to their House and Order; and in spite of the speeches we may expect from the Duke of Argyll, who will unhorse his opponents, and from Lord Gran- ville, who will give them the gentle stabs which the old knights called coups de ndsericorde, the Peers will not seriously worry Lord Beaconsfield or Lord Derby. But the House of Com- mons, when awake, still rules, and in the House of Commons Sir Stafford Northcote, weary with hopeless debate against his superiors in statement, in argument, and in oratorical power,. may find that the host behind him contains a good many weak- kneed men. The borough Tories will not be in a pleasant position. Their constituents are not pro-Turkish, and although, if the Liberals only criticise and propose nothing, they will leave their Members free, they may be, as we believe, would be, greatly roused by a new and definite policy, the Canning policy, for the liberation of the Eastern Christians. They are not much moved by London opinion, care nothing about" Society," and disapprove very strongly of massacre and outrage as regular means of government. If the Liberal leaders have the courage of their opinions, announce that in their judgment the ascend- ancy of the Ottoman caste must end, and suggest that the British fleet should be sent to the Bosphorus, to cut the Turkish Empire in two, it is by no means certain that the borough Tories could cling either to Lord Beaconsfield's pro- Turkish ideas or to the Cabinet's probable policy of leaving all things alone. They might, of course, defy their consti- tuents. This Parliament has four years to run, and being the worst ever elected since the Reform Bill, may sit the longest, but a distinct severance between Members and constituents can in this country hardly last. Ordinary government would be- come too difficult, and a dissolution would soon be made in- evitable. It is quite on the cards, if the Liberal chiefs do their duty, that Lord Beaconsfield, triumphant in the Lords and the idol of "Society," may find the House of Commons unmanage- able, and be told by his own lieutenants that they will not go on without a dissolution. He is no longer there himself, to. set matters right by an epigram, or an audacious but misty version of the facts. It is, of course, more probable, especially if the Liberal chiefs hesitate, and talk about duties which fall on united Europe, and not on individual members of the family, that the House of Commons may be half-hearted, may submit to the delay in the production of papers with which the Foreign Office will try to wear out the time of action—for after Russia has moved, action by her side will be difficult— and may content itself with cheering a few angry, but infructrt- ous speeches. That is a very frequent course of events in Eng- land, when the people and " Society " happen to be out of accord, and both alike are dispirited and timid through want of leadership. But it is not, for all that, an attitude which the people either enjoy or approve. They like clear courses, they are not timid, and they are very apt to follow the leader who proposes to them decided action in harmony with their own inner convictions. The silence on the subject has been most remarkable, but we do not believe that the people entirely enjoy seeing their Sovereign snubbed by Midhat Pasha, her repre- sentative refused an audience because the Sultan pleads tooth- ache, and her advice treated with a sneering disdain, scarcely veiled under ordinarily civil words. Electoral power does not now-a-days belong to "Society," and it may yet appear that the electors are aware of the truth that their country has been utterly humiliated by Turkey—acting, as Sir Stafford North- cote assures us, entirely within her rights—and may insist that this humiliation should be removed. In that case, her Majesty's Government, which just now seems to be in a most edifying frame of mind, to delight in chastisement and exult in rebuke, may have a very bad quarter of an hour.
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